User talk:PhilHibbs/Archive 1

Dwarves & dwarfs
Actually, currently both forms are considered correct, not only in Tolkien context. My Longman dictionary even gives "dwarves" first - it might have been incorrect earlier, but due to Tolkien's influence, it no longer is. Of course, it does matter which version is used by a particular writer (Tolkien uses dwarves, Pratchett uses dwarfs, some other fantasy works use one or the other), but when it comes to non-English works, like the Norse dwarves, the form used is irrelevant. Ausir 18:55, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Indeed, in astronomy dwarfs is the only correct form. No need to revert your edits, though, as both forms can be used for norse dwarfs/dwarves. It's just that there's no point in further changing it in other articles :).Ausir 13:36, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * I think consistency is desirable, especially within articles on a particular subject matter, such as norse mythology. I think common usage justifies 'dwarves' for mythological creatures and 'dwarf' for real-world usage such as astronomy and dwarfism. PhilHibbs 16:20, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm butting in here with a little trivia: before Tolkien, "dwarves" was virtually unknown. He basically invented the spelling. Now it has become semi-standard, leading to the odd phenomenon that most people search for "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves" when the want to find the movie "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". I myself use the spelling "dwarves" only to refer to the beings of Middle Earth, but this isn't a strict rule. – Quadell (talk) (help)  00:59, Nov 14, 2004 (UTC)

GNAA and Slashdot

 * You wrote in the VFD entry for GNAA: "Redirect and maybe mention briefly. I've been a keen Slashdotter for over 6 years, and I've never heard of them before, so they can't be that significant." Surely you jest. GNAA manages to get the first post at about half of the articles on Slashdot, one cannot miss them. Do you read at level -1? I would recommend setting your defaults to -1 so that you can see the entire range of opinion on Slashdot, some editors (though not all) have become notorious for using their unlimited mod points for moderating down anything they do not like. Sometimes it hides annoying stuff like GNAA, but for the most part it just wipes out valid expression of opinions. Crculver 20:01, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * Mostly days I just read the stories, but when there is a story that I am interested in feedback to, I read some comments. The whole site is so full of uninformed ranting at all moderation levels that I don't give much credence to the comments any more. I just don't want to see ASCII penis birds on my screen at work, so I let the moderators hide that for me. If some signal gets lost in the noise then I guess that's a victory for purile behaviour. PhilHibbs 08:56, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Besides, an encyclopedia doesn't need to contain an entry for every attention-seeking juvenile tosser with too much time on their hands. PhilHibbs 10:49, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * Having spent a little more time here, I am becoming more inclusionist. After all, what's the harm in having a GNAA article? At worst it wastes a bit of server resource, but as long as links to it aren't spammed all over other articles, I don't see the harm in it. PhilHibbs 12:08, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Images from other Wikipedias
Is there a way to link to images in other Wikipedias, or should they be duplicated? PhilHibbs 11:19, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * Linking does not seem to work (tested on de with en:Image:Anarion.png ), you&#8217;ll have to duplicate them. Add a lang link to the original image on the copied image page, and lang link to the copy from the origin image. User:Anárion 11:47, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * en:Image:Anarion.png adds an interwiki link, which is useful if the same image is uploaded in both wikipedias to keep the connection between the two. There is a proposal of Wikimedia Commons which can serve as a central repository for language-independent really free images (and other non-textual stuff), but so far it's just a proposal. andy 12:15, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)


 * Hi Phil. I have moved your question from the village pump as it was time to archive it. The launched today, so there should soon be a way to share images between Wikipedias, but until the software is set up to do this, you need to duplicate them. Angela. 18:45, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

pwn
The re-instatement was due to an edit conflict I got when I was working on the page. As for the word pwn it has gained a lot of popularity over the years, it even has its own article. See Pwn. I have seen it myself in a variety of contexts, so I think it is fair to say that is becoming a mainstream term like its "correct" version. Norman Rogers 01:58, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * I find it impossible to believe that 'pwn' has entered common usage. Frequently used on IRC, Usenet and X-Box Live maybe, but that isn't common usage. Common usage is the 6 O'Clock news. PhilHibbs 09:55, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Heading style
Hi, just wanted to let you know that Manual of Style advocates using all lowercase words in headings, except for the first word of the heading and for proper nouns. &mdash;Lowellian (talk)  08:32, Nov 16, 2004 (UTC)
 * Sure, but sometimes I'm a little uncertain as to what is a proper noun "President of the US" is, I think, but if someone is "elected president", is that a proper noun? PhilHibbs 10:14, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

In that context, "president" is just a noun. When you use it as a noun of address, it becomes a proper noun. If you said, "The President gave a speech today...", you'd use a capital, because you're shortening "The President of the United States" and thus still using a noun of address. --Westendgirl 03:51, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC) (PS: Thanks for the &pi info.)

Harold Holt
Is there another Harold Holt from whom Harold Edward Holt needs to be distinguished? If not, what is the point of adding his middle name to all these categories? Adam 11:29, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * What's the harm? I call it preventative maintenance. Feel free to remove it if it causes a problem. PhilHibbs 11:32, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ken Bigley
Hi Phil, Hope you don't mind. I removed the "s" from prisoners, as the word is meant to be a verb, not a noun. Regards, --Rebroad 23:15, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)


 * It seems I'm not the only one that read it as a noun, someone else has made the same "correction". I think most people, on reading it, would conclude that it was a mistake rather than "being held prisoner". PhilHibbs 10:40, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Article Licensing
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
 * Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
 * Multi-Licensing Guide
 * Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the " " template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:


 * Option 1
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR
 * Option 2
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace " " with "  ". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)
 * Done.   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 17:45, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Standardising headings
Hey there. I note that you're changing the headings in many articles in order to "standardise" them. While I agree with the the "External links" changes I was just wondering why you're adding spaces after and before the wiki syntax (== etc.) when it really doesn't make much of a difference. Personally I prefer not having the spaces there but it hardly matters, just thought it odd you'd spend so much time doing that. Is there some reason I'm missing? violet/riga (t) 17:13, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I checked a few major articles, and that seemed to be the standard usage, and it doesn't take any extra time now that I've automated it.   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 17:24, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * From what I can tell there is not accepted standard, but use of the + (section=new) button, as used in this section, automatically adds them. All the MOS examples have them without but don't refer to the practice. violet/riga (t) 17:38, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * You're right, the + button adds them, so that's good enough for me as far as "standard" goes. My script already does the spacing, so I'm sticking to it. :-)   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 17:42, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The space or no space in headings makes no difference in the appearance of the output: wikicode produces the same html from either.

Testing
And, for what it's worth, the example in the manual of style shows in without a space, although it does not prescribe either form. Shimmin 20:19, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)


 * Being a programmer, I believe in the value of consistency when it comes to technical language. The space-or-no-space thing could be seen as analagous to the brace-placement arguement in C-derived languages, but even then most would agree that consistency within an individual source file is desirable. So, all the articles that I am visiting to correct the most common deviations ("External Links" or "External link") will be reformatted to put spaces in. If nothing else it encourages me to check each other heading for misplaced capitals as part of checking that my script hasn't barfed.   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 10:02, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * The spaces make the headings easier to spot (for me) while scrolling through the text as well.   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 10:42, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Am I being watched?
Just out of interest, is anyone monitoring me to make sure that I'm not a very clever vandal who has spent the last 4 months building up a good reputation, only to slip in a pernicious piece of disinformation in the middle of an enormous set of seemingly automated edits? >:->   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 18:17, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * I'm off home now anyway, I might carry on tomorrow.   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 18:42, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No, we haven't been watching you. But we will now. Thanks for the heads up. Kevintoronto 21:23, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Hey, it's good just to get noticed.   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 09:51, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Diff link in signatures
I have suggested a feature to automatically verify a comment by creating a link to the diff of the comment being created. This is an explanation of how it could be used, as it has now scrolled off the Village Pump.

The user would include some markup in their sig that triggers the creation of a diff reference.

It would end up looking something like this:   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk | &#948; 17:56, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The advantage would be that prominent users such as Jimbo could use this feature to prevent anyone from credibly impersonating them, as all their talk page comments would include a link that proves that it was them that wrote it. &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 18:32, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedians who blog
Hi! if you have a moment, could you please see Wikinews and blogs to comment? We're interested in learning how Wikinews can work with bloggers; what they might be interested in, how they can take advantage of Wikinews, how they can contribute through their blogs, etc. Thanks! Amgine/talk


 * I wouldn't really describe myself as a blogger.   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 11:42, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Serial comma
Hello. In the past, I think you've spoken in favor of having guidelines on the serial comma in the WP Manual of Style. Currently, a few users have been taking out all guidance on that, replacing it with a statement that the MoS takes no position. They've said they reached a consensus on the talk page. Would you care to comment there? Jonathunder 22:14, 2005 May 9 (UTC)
 * I really can't get that worked up over the Oxford (or Harvard) Comma. I don't like it, except where it makes the sentence unambiguous, so I really can't work out why I voted against removing the requirement for it.   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 18:40, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Inclusion not Deletion
(AIW) can you take a look at Wikipedia "apartheid"? There is a movement to delete a two-word inclusion that is fact and true. It's gotten to the point that everyone is focused on the disputing editors and not the edit itself.

" Deletionists are disputing the following statement: "South Africa was settled initially by the Dutch, Germans and French from the 17th century onwards. English, other European settlers, and Diaspora Jews followed in the 19th century." This statement is true, and it therefore should not be deleted.69.217.125.53 15:10, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Apartheid

Thanks!


 * This is not a deletionist/inclusionist issue. Making an article longer can make it less useful.   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 08:25, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry you feel you were spammed, that was not the intention. Is there a way to make a notice for all AIW members, so as to avoid individual talk posts? It would notify more group members as well. As to the inlusion, it's only 2 words. That makes an article longer? thanks. 69.221.60.181 16:58, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * If this were an inclusionist issue, then I would not object to being contacted on my talk page. Inclusionist is about whether an article deserves to exist in Wikipedia, not the relative importance of facts within an article. To answer your specific point, unimportant facts placed in the same context as important facts give those unimportant facts undue focus. And yes, the importance of facts is POV, so it's a difficult area, and I don't want to get into this specific issue as I don't know the history of apartheid.   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 08:50, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for contacting me I was wondering what it was about but didn't really understand :). As well advice to people with IP address nicks, since they have recently prused your talk page: get a legit name. People are less inclined to believe you are a sock puppet or other kind of malcontent if you take the 5 seconds to register your nick - you don't even need an email address :). --ShaunMacPherson 19:51, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Al Qaeda
I don't see how that was nonsense (although that makes a stronger case with your revision)....I mean, which court and magistrate in their right mind would award copyright damages to a terrorist? -- Natalinasmpf 7 July 2005 12:39 (UTC)
 * It was unnecessary, and looked like POV written in anger. A statement that effectively says "Terrorists can't hold copyright" doesn't really belong in an encyclopedia. You're right, it's a no-brainer that nobody's going to take us to court over it, but that's not the point. Someone else might want to use Wikipedia content under the GFDL, and if we play fast and loose with copyright law then we are doing them a disservice.   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk

Current and Wikinews
Hi Phil, I'm re-visiting the idea of including a link to Wikinews in the Current template. Could you join in the discussion, perhaps? Dan100 (Talk) 06:38, July 14, 2005 (UTC)
 * Done, but I think just going ahead and changing the template was the wrong thing to do.   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 12:21, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Border Morris
Hi. Because there doesn't seem to be any allusion whatsoever to black culture in this instance -- just a blackening of the face -- I wouldn't consider it to be true blackface. Whether you choose to make it a "Related topics" link or not, I couldn't/wouldn't support any attempt to return the text I excised to the body of the article. Interesting phenomenon, though. :) Peace. deeceevoice 18:03, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

A Border Morris "side" (group)   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 18:25, 26 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Damnedest (weirdest) lookin' buncha black folks I've ever seen. Yikes! :p deeceevoice 18:28, 26 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Actually, it's a great photo. Why doesn't it appear in the Border Morris article?  deeceevoice 22:10, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Good point, I will try to secure permission. &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 09:00, 27 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Good mornin'. :) Well, I'm thinking the article could use a bit of a punch -- besides, an interesting photo might inspire/intrigue someone and inspire a bit more research. They're certainly a curious-looking bunch.  deeceevoice 09:12, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Thank you
Never mind what I wanted to say; whatever it was, it was, uh - wassaword? - chauvinistic... --VKokielov 16:12, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Quick image-tweaking request
Hi, I saw your name at graphic artist wikipedians, and I was wondering if you could please help me out with a photo I took of a cd cover. My camera messed up the levels and washed out the colour, and I no longer have access to a computer with photoshop etc. I was hoping you could increase the saturation, and maybe increase the contrast a little. The image is. It's supposed to be a sunny, vibrant yellow. Thank you --Qirex 15:10, 3 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Done ([Shift]-refresh if it doesn't update).   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 11:17, 7 November 2005 (UTC)


 * That looks great, thank you so much! Here is a flower for you :) --Qirex 11:41, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

and
I added an answer to your question on the help desk. I think you found the right tags, but you used the wrong one on the template. You should use when you want the template not to be in the category, but any articles that have the template to be in the category.

Posting here as you thought you had the correct answer and so might not check back at WP:HD. --GraemeL (talk) 13:48, 11 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Oops, yes, you're right, thanks! Fortunately the change only gets effected when the articles are edited so I don't think I did any damage.   &mdash; PhilHibbs | talk 13:51, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguating abbreviations
You contributed to the TFD discussion for 2LCdisambig. I am following this with further discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages). Susvolans ⇔ 18:52, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Metafiction
See Talk:Metafiction.

Please check your WP:NA entry
Greetings, editor! Your name appears on List of non-admins with high edit counts. If you have not done so lately, please take a look at that page and check your listing to be sure that following the particulars are correct: Thank you, and have a wiki wiki day! BD2412 T 03:26, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) If you are an admin, please remove your name from the list.
 * 2) If you are currently interested in being considered for adminship, please be sure your name is in bold; if you are opposed to being considered for adminship, please cross out your name (but do not delete it, as it will automatically be re-added in the next page update).
 * 3) Please check to see if you are in the right category for classification by number of edits.

Proposal on Notability
Because you're a member of the Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians, I'm notifying you that the inclusionist proposa Non-notabilityl is in progress to define the role of notability in articles. Please help us make this successful! Also note the proposal Importance is a deletionist proposla that seeks to officially introduce notabiltiy for the first time. Make sure this is defeated! --Ephilei 22:56, 25 June 2006 (UTC)